ON WILD LAKES
On a lake, which is now called Whitefish Lake, the travellers secured
the young moose they had been looking for, and here they stopped a few
days to smoke and dry the meat and to rest. Until now they had been
living on fresh and smoked fish and on rabbits.
Ganawa then told the lads that they would now travel northward. An old
Indian at Michipicoten Bay had told him that two white men had gone
northward to look for gold rock on a high cliff on one of the big
lakes. He thought it was Oba Lake. Now Ganawa wanted to try to find the
white men and the gold rock and he also wished to see several big lakes
on which his father once made a great hunting trip, but which Ganawa
had never seen. His white sons could now go with him, he said. He did
not have to provide any longer for his Indian sons and daughters, and
so he wished to see these big lakes before he was too old to go on long
hard journeys.
It was the middle of July when they reached Lake Manitowik. From this
lake they portaged to Dog Lake, and from Dog Lake they crossed a mile
overland to Lake Wabatongushi.
Whitefish Lake and Manitowik Lake are narrow lakes with simple
shore-lines which run from southwest to northeast; but on the other two
lakes the lads felt completely lost. They passed an endless number of
bays and not a few islands, and several nights they camped on an island
where they were entirely free from mosquitoes.
“Bruce, I think we are pretty close to Hudson Bay,” remarked Ray when
they had been several days travelling along the west shore of
Wabatongushi. “It is right that this lake should have a long name,
because it is so long that I think we shall never reach the end of it.
“We shall never find Jack Dutton, Bruce. This country is so big that
you might as well tell me to find a carpet-tack you lost in Vermont as
to expect to find Jack Dutton. I wonder if Ganawa knows where we are.
Pretty soon it will be winter and then we shall freeze to death in our
tepee.”
As they travelled along under the lee of the west shore where the water
was quiet, they saw the whitecaps breaking on the east shore, although
the lake is in most places less than a mile wide, but it is about
twenty miles long and runs straight north and south.
While they were travelling northward, they were constantly looking for
a camp or signs of a camp, but the whole country seemed an endless
wilderness, uninhabited by either Indians or white men. They discovered
several old camp-sites of Indians, but only one where white men had
camped on the northwest bay of the lake.
“Look, my sons,” said Ganawa. “It was a white men’s camp. They built a
big fire and let it run up the hills and it killed all the pines and
other trees, but we shall go up there and look for gold rock.”
If the lads had thought that looking for gold rock, which is now called
prospecting, was easy, they learned something new. Ganawa led them up a
steep rocky hill where hundreds of dead trees lay in all directions,
and where birches and pin-cherry bushes had begun to cover the
destruction wrought by the fire. At last Ganawa stopped on the top of a
ridge over a vein of white quartz about a foot wide. “This should be
the gold rock,” he said. “It looks as my father and a white man
described it to me; but I cannot see the gold.”
They followed the vein over the hill until it was lost in some green
timber in the valley beyond, then they returned to the bay and made
camp for the night.
Next morning Ganawa sat a long time thinking, then he rose up and
pointed to the northwest. “My sons,” he said, “there is another large
lake, Oba Lake, in the direction of the setting sun, and if you are not
tired of travelling with me, we shall go there, but there is no portage
trail to it and it is more than a league away. There are many beavers
on the streams that run into that lake and your friend may be on that
lake, but I do not know if we shall find any gold rock near its shore.”
“My father,” replied Bruce, “if you think our friend might be on that
lake, we should go there and look for him. We might build a raft and
leave our canoe at this place.”
“My son,” Ganawa answered, “it is much hard work to build a raft on
which three men can travel and, when you have built it, you will find
it hard to travel on it, because it travels very slowly and you cannot
steer it against the wind. And sometimes your raft will float to-day,
but to-morrow it will sink, because the logs have sucked up much water
during the night. If we go we must carry our canoe across the hills to
the lake. We can leave our tepee here and take only our blankets and
some dried meat.”
So they tied their blankets and provisions in the canoe and started
out. Ganawa and Bruce carried the canoe while Ray was told to walk
behind and mark the trail, which he did by blazing some trees and
breaking the tops of some brush.
“It will be much easier for us to return over a blazed trail,” said
Ganawa, “and we shall be sure to strike the place where we left our
tepee and other things.”
Ganawa held a northwesterly course, directing himself by the sun. “We
cannot miss the lake,” he remarked, “because it is six leagues long.”
As Ray worked along, blazing more trees and breaking more brush than
was necessary, he had the feeling that they were all hopelessly lost in
a trackless wilderness. “We shall never find Jack Dutton in a hundred
years,” he thought. “I wish I were back home in Vermont. I could never
find my way back to the Big Lake, and I don’t believe Ganawa knows
where we are. We have passed a thousand bays and I can’t tell one from
the other.”
They might have been travelling three hours when Bruce gave a shout,
and he and Ganawa set the canoe down for a rest, as they had done many
times.
“What have you found?” called Ray and ran over to see.
“Look ahead,” answered Bruce, “and see.” Before the travellers lay
spread out a most beautiful sheet of blue water, for the sky was clear
and the wind had not yet sprung up, as it nearly always does in the
middle of the forenoon.
“But there are no big hills around the lake as there are around Lake
George and Lake Champlain back home,” remarked Ray. “It is all just a
wild country, not a soul living in it. I wish we were home, Bruce.”
The country of Dog Lake, Wabatongushi, and Oba Lake is still nearly as
wild as in the days of our story. A few Indians, trappers, miners,
lumbermen, and railroad men now live in the country, but it is still a
great playground of lakes and forests, although fire has ruined much of
the fine green timber. All three of the lakes may be reached by rail,
and any one who wishes to do so may follow the trail of Ganawa and his
white sons.